Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

A lot of comments about this movie have centered on the apparently slapstick comedy, ignoring its usage to lend a sense of the grotesque in what is a essentially a masterful farce, and beneath the surface, more of a tragedy.

This movie centers around the two young protagonists, full of ideals and the will to win against the powers of endemic and ubiquitous corruption, a corruption that is so manifestly present that the others do not seem to question its existence, but implicitly assume it and use it to serve their own ends. However, our heroes find the going quite tough.

Although partly inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-up", this movie is in a class by itself, with dark humor reminiscent of Kafka and Gogol. The star cast includes some of the finest actors to ever grace the screens of Bollywood (or for that matter, anywhere else). Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapoor and many others deliver stellar performances in this tragi-comedy which is one of finest pearls produced by the New Wave movement in Indian cinema.

Regretabbly, comprehension of the movie requires intimate knowledge of the background, something which you would only have if you have lived in India, where corruption is as natural as breathing, and if you are familiar with the turbulent times when New Wave Cinema was taking off, a time of discontent and idealism among youth, a time of unemployment and the times of the angry young man (as typified by Amitabh Bachchan in many commercial films from this era).

However one can still enjoy it for it is a comedy worth watching. Hopefully, the viewer will see the tragedy beneath the humor.

I rate this movie among the finest movies of all time, and in the class of farces, it stands alongside Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove".

Rib-tickling, side-splitting .. but also cynical, intelligent, and very, very dark. Comedy as it should be and so very rarely is. Corrupt politicians in cahoots with thieving contractors, their scheming rivals and their inept secretaries ... add two bumbling, idealistic, naive young photographers in the 'right' place at the 'right' time ..... throw 'em all together and all hell breaks loose, and boy is it hilarious!! I've seen this several times and never failed to collapse in helpless fits of laughter. Wonder why they don't make them like this anymore, and wish they did!

This was a wonderful comedy, no cheap humor, no poor jokes, just a simple inexpensive movie made with a great script, good jokes and wonderful actors. The scene at the theater where the mahabharat is being enacted is by far the funniest 15 minutes in the history of Indian Cinema. A must see for everyone.

They've never quite managed to make a movie like this one. Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Vaswani play photographers caught in a messy affair involving corrupt politicians, wicked businessmen, canny journalists (and some hammy actors). Giving director Kundan Shah (who has, surprising, gone on to the make some of the most awful films of the last decade) the chance to unleash his brilliant satire. He hits all his targets. Satish Shah is hilarious as a dead body on roller skates, and the 'Disrobing of Draupadi' scene in the theatre is one of the funniest ever shot. Like the rest of the film, it could have been cringe-inducingly-awful. If it weren't so funny, that is.

Quite apart from its social satire, unimaginably ahead of its time for the dour early '80's Delhi, JBDY managed to bring together a slew of talent, Shah(s), Baswani, Kapoor, and of course the inimitable Puri 'Ahuja'. Folks over at NFDC still take the movie apart frame by frame, deconstructing its topical references and attempt to interpolate a social conscience to it. More than its concluding 'Draupadi vastraharan' scene, symbolic of the wretched disrobing of the Indian polity however, the film managed to make me cry out loud with laughter even as an impressionable twelve year old, merely for its slapstick content. This is a movie which gets better with every viewing, and reveals slick, symbolic and subversive undertones worthy of Kundan Shah's maverick vision.